House Atreides - By Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson Page 0,5

the Emperor. They would record it, log it as a find, and document the destruction of the crew and equipment. No need to manipulate the records now. Old Elrood would not be pleased, and House Harkonnen would have to absorb this financial setback.

As the pilot circled around, the surviving spice crew assessed their damages on the ground, and over the comlink reported losses of men, equipment, and spice load. The Baron felt rage boiling within him.

Damn Arrakis! he thought. Damn the spice, and damn our dependence on it!

We are generalists. You can’t draw neat lines around planetwide problems. Planetology is a cut-and-fit science.

—PARDOT KYNES, Treatise on the Environmental Recovery of Post-Holocaust Salusa Secundus

On the Imperial planet Kaitain, immense buildings kissed the sky. Magnificent sculptures and opulent tiered fountains lined the crystal-paved boulevards like a dream. A person could stare for hours.

Pardot Kynes managed to catch only a glimpse of the urban spectacle as the royal guards marched him at a rapid clip into the Palace. They had no patience for a simple Planetologist’s curiosity, nor any apparent interest in the city’s wonders. Their job was to escort him to the tremendous vaulted throne room, without delay. The Emperor of the Known Universe could not be kept waiting for mere sight-seeing.

The members of Kynes’s escort wore gray-and-black uniforms, impeccably clean and adorned with braids and medals, every button and bauble polished, every ribbon straightened and pressed. Fifteen of the Emperor’s handpicked staff, the Sardaukar, surrounded him like an army.

Still, the splendor of the capital world overwhelmed Kynes. Turning to the guard closest to him, he said, “I’m usually out in the dirt, or tromping through swamps on a planet where nobody else wants to be.” He had never seen, or even imagined, anything like this in all of the rugged and out-of-the-way landscapes he had studied.

The guard made no response to this tall, lean off-worlder. Sardaukar were trained to be fighting machines, not conversationalists.

“Here I’ve been scrubbed clean down to the third layer of my skin and dressed like a noble.” Kynes tugged at the thick corded fabric of his dark blue jacket, smelled the soap and scent of his own skin. He had a high forehead, with sparse, sandy hair combed straight back.

The escort hurried up a seemingly endless waterfall of polished stone steps, ornately highlighted with gold filigree and creamy, sparkling soostones.

Kynes turned to the guard on his left. “This is my first trip to Kaitain. I’d wager you don’t even notice the sights anymore, if you work here all the time?” His words hung on a wistful smile, but again fell on deaf ears.

Kynes was an expert and well-respected ecologist, geologist, and meteorologist, with added specialties in botany and microbiology. Driven, he enjoyed absorbing the mysteries of entire worlds. But the people themselves often remained a complete mystery to him— like these guards.

“Kaitain is a lot more . . . comfortable than Salusa Secundus— I grew up there, you know,” he continued. “I’ve been to Bela Tegeuse, too, and that’s almost as bad, dim and bleak with two dwarf suns.”

Finally Kynes faced forward, consenting to mutter to himself. “The Padishah Emperor called me from halfway across the galaxy. I wish I knew why.” None of these men ventured to offer any explanations.

The entourage passed under a pitted archway of crimson lava rock that bore the ponderous oppression of extreme age. Kynes looked up, and with his geological expertise recognized the massive rare stone: an ancient archway from the devastated world of Salusa Secundus.

It puzzled him that anyone would keep such a relic from the austere planet where Kynes had spent so many years, an isolated prison world with a ruined ecosystem. But then he recalled, feeling like a fool for having forgotten it, that Salusa had once been the Imperial capital, millennia ago . . . before the disaster changed everything. No doubt House Corrino had brought this archway here intact as a reminder of their past, or as some sort of trophy to show how the Imperial family had overcome planet-destroying adversity.

As the Sardaukar escort stepped through the lava arch and into the echoing splendor of the Palace itself, fanfare rang out from brassy instruments Kynes could not name. He’d never been much of a student in music or the arts, not even as a child. Why bother, when there was so much natural science to absorb?

Just before passing beneath the jewel-sparkling roof of the immense royal structure, Kynes craned his neck upward to gaze once more